In Hixie's related message[1] to the whatg list, there's another key point
that I think should be added to the CP(s), and that I think will also help
us to reach agreement.
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012Aug/0004.html
That point is to have a "trial period" for this new attribute, and to
revisit this discussion after that trial period is over.
So, specifically, the CP text should state:
- We will add this new attribute on an experimental basis.
- We should commit to revisiting the issue in a year or two.
- At that time, we examine what impact has had on Web pages.
Hixie also outlined some specific questions to ask at that time -
- Is the attribute being (ab)used in inappropriate ways?
- Is it used badly more than correctly?
- Are validator users more happy, or less happy?
- Are alt="" texts overall better or worse?
- Have any generators started it rather than outputting bogus alt=""?
I also wanted to note here that Henri recently added a statistics-gathering
feature to the validator that could end up being useful for gathering stats
related to this -- at least as far as giving us usage data on any validator
options related to this. We may also add a message-filtering option to the
validator, and that stats-gathering feature may also be able to give us
some stats about classes of messages that users choose to filter (though
that might be a challenge since the filtering options are purely
client-side options that don't initiate any communication to the server).
--Mike
--
Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike